Unghostly entanglement

[Lazarus]

UNGHOSTLY ENTANGLEMENT

 

A method of entangling pairs of bowling pins.

 

Two lines of bowling pins feed into a device that shoots them off two pins at a time. One line of pins is upright and the other line has the pins inverted. Each line feeds two pins at a time into the shooting device. The two lines of pins feed alternately or randomly into the shooting device. Measuring the results at random times will have 50% up pins and 50% down pins. However, if one pair of pins is fired then measured both pins will be either up or down, regardless of the time or place of the measurement.

[Strange]

What makes you think that has anything to do with entanglement?

[Lazarus]

What makes you think that has anything to do with entanglement?

 

Same rules

[swansont]

Will an "up" pin be up no matter where it is after it has left the device?

[Lazarus]

Will an "up" pin be up no matter where it is after it has left the device?

 

 

What you are getting at is that the paired things are suppose to oscillate and the bowling pins do not. Is the evidence for oscillation that solid?

 

For instance, photons are represented as sine waves but that may not be the physical case.

 

The input to an antenna is designed to be a sign wave so the output appears as a sign wave. But since a photon is apparently generated by a single electron and will cause an electron in an appropriate wire to move in one direction a second photon is needed to move an electron in the opposite direction. It looks like a sine wave to the receiving antenna. Other effects could be causing the appearance of oscillation in many cases.

[swansont]

 

 

What you are getting at is that the paired things are suppose to oscillate and the bowling pins do not. Is the evidence for oscillation that solid?

 

For instance, photons are represented as sine waves but that may not be the physical case.

 

The input to an antenna is designed to be a sign wave so the output appears as a sign wave. But since a photon is apparently generated by a single electron and will cause an electron in an appropriate wire to move in one direction a second photon is needed to move an electron in the opposite direction. It looks like a sine wave to the receiving antenna. Other effects could be causing the appearance of oscillation in many cases.

 

I didn't say anything about oscillation. I just asked if the pin was in a definite state vs an undetermined one.

[Lazarus]

The up pins stay up, the down pins stay down. To the observer that is going to measure them they are undetermined before measurement.

[Strange]

So why do think there is any similarity between this and entanglement?

[swansont]

The up pins stay up, the down pins stay down. To the observer that is going to measure them they are undetermined before measurement.

But in QM the states are undetermined. That's more than simply not knowing the answer. So this is not like entanglement.

[Lazarus]

The selection of which side feeds into the projection mechanism can be may as random and unpredictable as desired. How does that make the initiation determined?

[swansont]

The selection of which side feeds into the projection mechanism can be may as random and unpredictable as desired. How does that make the initiation determined?

No it can't if it works as you describe, measuring pairs. If the feed is random you can get uu, dd and ud pairs.

 

Further, what happens if you change the detection axis? What if it's at 45° to the device axis? 90°?

[Lazarus]

Swansont said:

No it can't if it works as you describe, measuring pairs. If the feed is random you can get uu, dd and ud pairs.

Lazarus said:

The randomness is between paths. Two bowling pins are released at a time from one path. Only uu or dd.

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Swansont said:
Further, what happens if you change the detection axis? What if it's at 45° to the device axis? 90°?

Lazarus said:

Excellent point. To make it match better the bowling pins must be magnetized with North on the small end and South on the big end. The measuring devices are each a pair of magnetism sensors on both sides of the target areas. The two sensors connect to a decision box that generates a one or zero based on which input signal is stronger. The target area is a little larger than the bowing pins. At 0 and 180 degrees the results are 100%. At 90 degrees the results are 50% correct. In between the percentage varies.

[swansont]

At 90 degrees the results are 50% correct. In between the percentage varies.

 

So it's not like entanglement.

[Strange]

[Lazarus]

This effort was an attempt to match the results of the common explanations of entanglement results.

 

There is something missing in most explanations. If the state of the entangled objects is the same at the start and doesn’t change in flight, it should give the same results at any time the objects are measured. Two entangled photons with the same polarization and frequency should be the same at any time that they were examined. What is missing that causes the problem?

[swansont]

This effort was an attempt to match the results of the common explanations of entanglement results.

 

There is something missing in most explanations. If the state of the entangled objects is the same at the start and doesn’t change in flight, it should give the same results at any time the objects are measured. Two entangled photons with the same polarization and frequency should be the same at any time that they were examined. What is missing that causes the problem?

 

The state of the entangled particles is not the same as at the start — they are undetermined, which is what "hidden variable" tests show. You got that? The individual states are undetermined. Only the relation between the two is determined (e.g. orthogonal polarization). That's what you are missing.

[Lazarus]

If you know the relationship of 2 objects and the state of one of them doesn’t that allow you to calculate the state of the other?

[swansont]

If you know the relationship of 2 objects and the state of one of them doesn’t that allow you to calculate the state of the other?

Yes, but in entanglement you don't know the state of anything prior to the measurement

[Lazarus]

Yes, but in entanglement you don't know the state of anything prior to the measurement

 

When you measure the state of one object, why would anything need to be transmitted to the other since it has been in the same state and relationship since it became entangled?

[swansont]

When you measure the state of one object, why would anything need to be transmitted to the other since it has been in the same state and relationship since it became entangled?

It hasn't been in the same state. There is no state to have. The state is undetermined until the measurement, and the result depends on how you do the measurement. e.g. For photons, if you place the polarizer at 27°, you can get 27° or 117°. If you place it at 0° you can get 0° or 90°

[Lazarus]

The state of the bowling pins is undetermined while the firing mechanism is rotating. When the pins are fired the state is no longer undetermined but is unknown. How do we know the state of photons remains undetermined while they are in flight?

[swansont]

The state of the bowling pins is undetermined while the firing mechanism is rotating. When the pins are fired the state is no longer undetermined but is unknown. How do we know the state of photons remains undetermined while they are in flight?

 

Because you can do measurements that tell you this. These are the Bell tests that have been mentioned. No matter what orientation you polarizer set has (or spin measurement), you will measure one polarization or the other and have the correlation between the particles. That can only happen if the polarization is undetermined. If the polarizations were set but just unknown, they would follow different statistics.

[Strange]

A very brief intro to the statistics behind Bell's theorem: http://drchinese.com/David/Bell_Theorem_Easy_Math.htm

A longer overview of the topic: http://www.drchinese.com/Bells_Theorem.htm

[Lazarus]

The following appears to be an explanation of the “proof” of quantum entanglement.

 

Imagine a pair of particles that can be measured at distant locations. Suppose that the measurement devices have settings, which are angles—e.g., the devices measure something called spin in some direction. The experimenter chooses the directions, one for each particle, separately. Suppose the measurement outcome is binary (e.g., spin up, spin down). Suppose the two particles are perfectly anti-correlated—in the sense that whenever both measured in the same direction, one gets identically opposite outcomes, when both measured in opposite directions they always give the same outcome. The only way to imagine how this works is that both particles leave their common source with, somehow, the outcomes they will deliver when measured in any possible direction. (How else could particle 1 know how to deliver the same answer as particle 2 when measured in the same direction? They don't know in advance how they are going to be measured...). The measurement on particle 2 (after switching its sign) can be thought of as telling us what the same measurement on particle 1 would have given.

Start with one setting exactly opposite to the other. All the pairs of particles give the same outcome (each pair is either both spin up or both spin down). Now shift Alice's setting by one degree relative to Bob's. They are now one degree off being exactly opposite to one another. A small fraction of the pairs, say f, now give different outcomes. If instead we had left Alice's setting unchanged but shifted Bob's by one degree (in the opposite direction), then again a fraction f of the pairs of particles turns out to give different outcomes. Finally consider what happens when both shifts are implemented at the same time: the two settings are now exactly two degrees away from being opposite to one another. By the mismatch argument, the chance of a mismatch at two degrees can't be more than twice the chance of a mismatch at one degree: it cannot be more than 2f.

Compare this with the predictions from quantum mechanics for the singlet state. For a small angle θ, measured in radians, the chance of a different outcome is approximately as explained by small-angle approximation. At two times this small angle, the chance of a mismatch is therefore about 4 times larger, since . But we just argued that it cannot be more than 2 times as large.

This intuitive formulation is due to David Mermin. The small-angle limit is discussed in Bell's original article, and therefore goes right back to the origin of the Bell inequalities.

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There are a couple of things that need a better explanation.

 

The contention that the results for 2% implies twice as many misses has a problem. As shown by the bowling pins, Rotating the target area does not linearly increase the length of a horizontal line across the target area. That means the two times as many assumption has a problem.

 

The other item is that it doesn’t seem to “prove” the flight of the photon stayed indeterminate.

 

 

 

A slight rotation of the target area allows some misses but doubling the rotation can more than double the misses.

[swansont]

There are a couple of things that need a better explanation.

 

The contention that the results for 2% implies twice as many misses has a problem. As shown by the bowling pins, Rotating the target area does not linearly increase the length of a horizontal line across the target area. That means the two times as many assumption has a problem.

 

The other item is that it doesn’t seem to “prove” the flight of the photon stayed indeterminate.

 

 

rotate.JPG

 

A slight rotation of the target area allows some misses but doubling the rotation can more than double the misses.

I'm not seeing what the length of the horizontal line across the target area has to do with this. It's the angle that's being measured.